Syria in the Spotlight

In the past two weeks, sectarian tensions here led to the resignation of the Lebanese prime minister and the collapse of the government. On Saturday, Sunni politician Tammam Salam was named as the next prime minister, his nomination backed by most political parties including Shiites. Mr. Salam's challenge is to form a cabinet with representatives from across the political spectrum, including the Hezbollah-led alliance. Mr. Salam said in his first public speech Saturday that his first priority was to prevent a spillover of violence from Syria into Lebanon.

Lebanon, divided along sectarian lines that support and oppose Syria's regime, has become a logistical support base for the civil war next door. Fighters and weapons for both warring sides in Syria pass through the country.

The flames are being fanned by the Hezbollah, backed by Iran, and the Sunni-led March 14 faction, backed by Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah supports government forces in Syria while many Lebanese Sunnis are aiding the rebels.

Lebanon's steep descent, in many ways, goes back to October, when an explosion ripped through the car of Brigadier Gen. Wissam al Hassan, killing him. Gen. Hassan was the country's intelligence chief and a key figure in the Sunni March 14th group.

His assassination helped unleash a spiral of sectarian violence amid speculation that he may have been targeted because of his secret role in Syria's conflict.

Gen. Hassan had used his post as head of intelligence to organize weapons shipments to Syrian rebels from Lebanese territory in the year before he was killed, according to several key associates familiar with the network.

Several times he funneled weapons from Lebanon's own government stocks, replacing them soon afterward, according to rebel groups his network helped arm. Lebanese government officials declined to comment on his activities.

ENLARGE

Brig. Gen. Wissam al Hassan
Associated Press

Gen. Hassan's allies have blamed Syria and Hezbollah for the bombing. Both Syria and Hezbollah deny involvement.

Meanwhile, in the Shiite-dominated south of Lebanon, Hezbollah has been flexing its muscles to aid the Syrian government.

IranAir added an extra flight each week between Tehran and Beirut after security threats inside Syria made using the Damascus airport difficult. Hezbollah wants to preserve a supply route from Iran into Lebanon that can be used regardless of whether the Syrian government survives its civil war, according to people in Iran and Lebanon familiar with Iran's connections with Hezbollah.

Officially, Lebanon's government and Hezbollah's policy has been to "disassociate" the country from the Syrian conflict. But in reality that has proved impossible for Seyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and his main opposition in Lebanese politics, the March 14th faction led by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

"Hezbollah and Hariri's group are playing with fire. They will eventually bring the war to Lebanon," said Farid Khazen, a Christian member of parliament and a political-science professor at the American University of Beirut.

Messrs. Nasrallah and Hariri both deny their factions have promoted conflict in Lebanon.

Tensions rise with each day of carnage across the border. In Syria on Saturday, a government airstrike killed 15 people, including nine children, in Aleppo, where rebel fighters have been battling forces loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian conflict has changed Lebanon in profound ways. Nearly one million Syrians have come into Lebanon as refugees or new residents. Fighting has broken out between Lebanese Alawites and Sunnis in the northern city of Tripoli, killing at least half a dozen civilians. Alawites are the Shiite-linked Muslim sect that controls the Syrian government.

Lebanon's north, far more religiously conservative than Beirut, is a stronghold for the Sunnis. A steel statue spelling Allah greets visitors to the central square in Tripoli. Street vendors blast Quranic prayer and verses from hand-held radios.

Soon after Mr. Hassan's death, Sunni networks supporting the Syrian rebels turned large industrial warehouses in Tripoli into arms depots. Clerics say they try to restrain waves of frustrated, jobless youth from entering the battle in Syria. But many go anyway.

At least 13 young Tripoli residents went missing. They turned up dead in Syria. Ranging in age between 16 and 24 years, the youths had crossed into Syria to join a battalion led by a member of a militant Islamist group known as Fatah al-Islam, which is fighting to overturn the Syrian government, according to family members of some of the dead youth.

It took a month of negotiations between the Lebanese and Syrian governments before Syria consented to having the Lebanese General Security Directorate, a Hezbollah-controlled agency, retrieve the bodies, said Sheik Mohammed Ibrahim, a Tripoli-based cleric. The sheik said he is related to two of the slain boys and represented all of the families in negotiations.

Every Friday until the last batch of bodies was transferred into Lebanon, Islamist parties protested, threatening violence to the Lebanese government because of its links to Hezbollah and the Syrian government.

In late December, Syrian authorities handed over the last three corpses to Lebanese General Security officers. All the bodies, said Mr. Ibrahim, had their eyes gouged out, ears cut off and limbs disfigured. The incident "electrified Tripoli," he said.

The Syrian government called the Lebanese fighters members of a shadowy jihadist group and said they were killed in a military operation.

The incident spurred talk in Tripoli of a long-held ambition among some Sunnis to break from Lebanon's sect-based power-sharing political system and join up with Syrian Sunnis.

"From the birth of the Lebanese state, Tripoli has resisted being a part of Lebanon," said Ahmad al QasQas, a media representative for the Lebanese chapter of Hizb al-Tahrir, a pan-Arab Islamist party with aspirations for one nation spanning the region under the rule of an emir. "We have a true, Islamic link to Syria."

Efforts to carve out that link may have sparked another incident in February that brought Lebanese Sunnis into a direct clash with the Lebanese army near the country's eastern border with Syria.

A chaotic shootout in Arsaal left at least five men dead, including Khaled Hmayyed, a 45-year-old local who had fought alongside rebels in Syria for much of last year.

Military and security chiefs have given differing accounts of the incident.

According to official Lebanese Armed Forces statements, two army officers were killed in an ambush by a group of armed locals after an operation to arrest Mr. Hmayyed, who was wanted on "terrorism charges." The statements don't detail who was involved in the operation to arrest him or how he died.

Lebanese security officials said Mr. Hmayyed was recruiting fighters from Tripoli for a militant cell. They suspect he had ties to al Qaeda, or the al Qaeda-linked Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra. They wouldn't elaborate on the charges against him or comment on what they described as a covert, special-forces operation in Arsaal.

Some Arsaal residents and Sunni politicians believe Mr. Hmayyed was killed in order to draw the army into a confrontation with Arsaal residents and then besiege the town, cutting off a vital supply route for Syrian rebels while securing Hezbollah control of the area.

"They accused Arsaal of harboring al Qaeda," said town Mayor Ali Hujeiri, "as a pretext to strike the area." The military denies any wrongdoing in its handling of the incident.

Corrections & Amplifications Lebanon's former prime minister, Najib Mikati, resigned in the past two weeks. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said he resigned Saturday. In addition, Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, the assassinated intelligence chief of Lebanon, arranged weapons shipments to rebels in Syria in the year before he was killed, according to several key associates familiar with the network. The earlier version incorrectly said he sent weapons for two years before his death. Also, an earlier version incorrectly referred to Tammam Salam as Mr. Tammam on second reference.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.